Death to the Republican Party!

It is time for the Republican Party to die. To disappear forever from the American political scene. To salvage one, minuscule shred of dignity for itself and willingly disband.

The reason the Republican Party needs to just go away is that it is the most un-American political party in this country’s history. It would be one thing if the list of complaints against the Republican Party were limited to its attempts since the 1950s to divide Americans among themselves, or its eagerness to dismantle the middle class in this country and distribute its wealth to a handful of oligarchs, or its disgusting appeals to racism as a way to get votes.

These are character flaws along the lines of the genetic propensity of all Republican officials to embrace hypocrisy ”“ to have not even a speck of awareness of when they are lying, or when they are proposing something the very opposite of their private behavior. These sort of sins can be addressed by the voters, who can banish the Republicans from public office, but these sins are not sufficient to demand that the party dissolve itself.

No. What is fundamentally wrong with the Republican Party is that it routinely, vigorously, and unapologetically undermines the U.S. Constitution, and as such it has shown itself inimical to the interests of the republican form of government that is the foundation of the U.S. political order.

What better place to start with a catalog of these Constitutional crimes than the Bush administration. The Republican Party has already begun the process of disassociating itself from the disastrous eight years of rule by George W. Bush, but Bush and everything he did or stood for represents the culmination of decades of Republican policies and practices. Moreover, for the first six years of Bush’s rule, the Republicans controlled Congress and were eagerly complicit in his attacks on the Constitution. It would be more than dangerous ”“it would be fatal for this country to allow the Republicans to get away with calling Bush an aberration or not a true conservative, when he is everything that conservatism ”“ that Republicanism ”“ has been leading up to.

In what ways, then, can the Republican Party be seen as an enemy of the Constitution and therefore an enemy of the United States?

”¢ The Republican Party no longer believes in the equality of the three branches of government under the Constitution. Instead, the Republicans have elevated the Executive branch as supreme and unchallengeable. Republicans in Congress have supinely bowed to this doctrine and have orchestrated along with the Bush White House a cult of the leader that lasted at least as long as George Bush was popular. Republicans in Congress never once investigated the Bush administration or challenged any of its actions, and Republican appointees on the Supreme Court have shown themselves amenable to the concept of a ”œunitary executive”.

”¢ The Republican Party no longer believes that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Instead, under a number of circumstances, George W. Bush has been viewed as the supreme law of the land, and he need only claim he is protecting us under his role as Commander-in-Chief in order to ignore and override the Constitution. What makes this doctrine acceptable to many Republicans is the assertion by George Bush that he is subject to an even higher power ”“ the Heavenly Father who guides his thoughts and actions. In essence, then, the supreme law of the land under this doctrine is the Bible, and power therefore rests in the hands of the self-anointed preachers who interpret the Bible and talk directly to God.

”¢ The Republican Party no longer believes in the rule of law. The Bush administration has written hundreds of ”œsigning statements” that state explicitly that it will not enforce sections of the law that it finds disagreeable. The Bush administration has then proceeded to ignore the law, or circumvent it with internal legal opinions that state the opposite of what the law says and intends. Congress, meantime, has once again sat back abjectly and watched its right to enact laws dissolved, because the administration has refused to see that they are ”œfaithfully executed”, as called for in the Constitution.

”¢ The Republican Party no longer believes in the transparency of government that is a hallmark of a functioning democratic process. Instead, government is entitled to operate in secret. The doctrine of ”œstate secrets” is invoked to justify abuses that are against the Constitution and the law. The concept of accountability for one’s actions has been abandoned by the Republicans, and what better way to avoid accountability than to keep the work of the Executive branch secret.

”¢ The Republican Party has trampled upon the basic human rights of the people. The Republicans have traduced the ancient right of habeas corpus, the right to privacy in one’s personal communications, the right to confront witnesses in a trial, the right to an attorney, the right to a fair trial, and the right to appeal. The Republicans have violated the universal moral and legal prohibitions against torture, and they have ignored Constitutional bans on detaining accused persons in prisons indefinitely without ever being charged with a crime. The fact that these abuses ”“ these Constitutional and moral crimes ”“ have been perpetrated against both citizens and non-citizens, or that they have been visited on only a few (that we know of), is irrelevant. A right that is lost to the least of us is lost to all.

”¢ The Republican Party has established a state religion. It is not simply that the Republicans have channeled billions of taxpayer dollars to fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant denominations, to the exclusion of most other religions, or that the Republicans coordinate policy and legislation with leading fundamentalist and evangelical preachers. The Republicans have allowed these denominations to infiltrate the military at all levels, to the point now that clergy attached to military units in combat zones are overwhelmingly fundamentalist/evangelical ministers who are given complete latitude to proselytize for converts to their particular religious sect. Moreover, an increasing number of military officers at high levels have declared their allegiance to Jesus, and have willingly invoked His name in the ”œwar against terror.” This is all in keeping with the doctrine that God and the Bible are the supreme law of the land.

There is ample documentary evidence to buttress these claims and charges against the Republican Party, but these are only the Constitutional crimes that are publicly known. Much more subversion of the Constitution may have taken place that has yet to be discovered. What is known, however, is damning. The Republican Party has brought this nation far away from republican government, towards a much more authoritarian, and in some cases, totalitarian form of government.

It is a government where The Leader has paramount power, where citizens are monitored at every turn, where they are expected to spy on each other and report offenses to the government, where the military is used increasingly to provide domestic security, and where the police are increasingly transformed into military-like forces. It is a government where laws are ignored and people’s basic rights circumscribed. It is a government closely allied with business, industry and finance, to the point where corporations are allowed to draft the laws dutifully passed by Congress, and where corporations in turn are allowed to corrupt the lawmakers and government officials with campaign ”œcontributions.” It is a government that governs by fear, which is one step removed from governance by oppression.

The Democratic Party is not at all blameless in these developments. It is a party at a crossroads, where it has the opportunity to right these wrongs and reestablish the Constitution at the center of a republican form of government. It may fail in this task, at which point America is in serious trouble. But even if it succeeds, it needs an opposition party that is devoted heart and soul to the Constitution as the ”œsupreme law of the land.”

The Republican Party is incapable of filling this role. It has abandoned democratic principles, republican government and the Constitution so completely that there is no reform movement that can save the party. There is no Republican politician (with the possible exception of Ron Paul, who is marginalized in the party) who even senses the danger, much less is doing anything to change the party.

These are the reasons the Republican Party needs to disappear. As this will never happen involuntary, the citizens of the United States must make it happen, especially those who have called themselves Republicans for years and voted accordingly. The leaders of the Republican Party may be bereft of any sense of the damage they have done to the United States, but there are millions of Republican voters who have the interests of this country at heart. It is up to them to abandon the Republican Party and form a new political union that will be devoted to the Constitution, and that will help elect presidents who will understand and fulfill their oath of office ”“ to ”œPreserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Numerian

Numerian is a devoted author and poster on The Agonist, specializing in business, finance, the global economy, and politics. In real life he goes by the non-nom de plume of Garrett Glass and hides out in Oak Park, IL, where he spends time writing novels on early Christianity (and an occasional tract on God and religion). You can follow his writing career on his website, jehoshuathebook.com.

..you’ll likely see the rise of yet another ‘conservative’ (really only another right-wing racist/authoritarian) party to take its place.

I’ve reconciled myself to the unpalatable fact that there will be people who think for themselves, who make reasoned, rational decisions about themselves and those around them, and those for whom thinking is painful and unnatural, who *need* to have somebody telling them what to do, how to live, who to love, always building up their fragile egos, who will hate anything and anybody not meeting their ‘pack’s’ definition of ‘normal’.

Sad fact, no? (I no longer search for ‘truth’…too many times have I seen ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ be contradictory and diametrically opposed to each other)

-5.75,-4.05
“God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.” — Robin Williams

perhaps we should dissolve the Constitution. Seeing as it’s in shreds already, there’s really no point in keeping it. That would also get rid of the Federal Reserve’s charter.
The only problem I see, is that TPTB have already considered this option.
I know it’s World Net Daily, but Tom DeWeese is a PR man, someone hired him to get this meme started.

Obama’s gonna get assassinated and then the party will be on.
Rioting, Blackwater martial law, calls for more security forces, militia movements, etc. Waco, OK City, Seattle, Katrina, LA’s immigration march, Oakland; those are the previews to the main event.

It ain’t the GOP; it’s us. Election night in downtown Chicago felt like a love-in, but the security on display was awe inspiring. Thank God Obama’s back in DC, getting to the post office behind the Federal building was a bitch, w/ scary black-clad, jackbooted, mirrored aviator wearing guys waving you on w/ their assault rifles. …sigh, and it was Christmastime.

They expect Jack Bauer to go all Ollie North on the Congressional committee investigating torture, showing up the liberals as pusillanimous terrorist lovers.

Since the producers and writers of this show are well known Hollywood conservatives, why should they suddenly have to pander to the Obama agenda? It’s not as if the network is going to cancel 24.

I suppose seeing is believing. If Jack Bauer stops torturing people (which scenes by the way have gotten longer and more cruel, not less), then we can start talking about a public backlash against torture.

The problem is not so much with the Republican Party as with certain people who have committed acts in violation of the Constitution, international law, treaties, and other laws of the land, many of them after having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

The remedy is obvious. Constitutional lawyers like Prof. James Turley, and former Republican officials like John Dean, has said publicly that there is no question in their minds about serious offenses having been committed.

So far, neither party has seemed very interested in adhering to the Constitution or enforcing the law of the land. The Democratic Congress failed in its own constitutional duty to impeach the President and other high officials for these crimes. Now it falls to the current administration. If these crimes are not prosecuted, the Democrats will be as complicit as the Republicans, and the Democratic Party ought to dissolve itself also.

Constitutional lawyer Barack Obama is a snake in the grass on the Constitution until he prosecutes crimes committed by officials of the previous administration, including investigating the highest officials.

I have talked to some top state-level Republicans last week here in MN, they believe the national Republican Party has spoiled the brand altogether & they’re forced to go back to scratch…

I just started reading James Bamford’s The Shadow Factory, his updated look at the NSA and domestic surveillance through 9/11 to today. One thing in particular I noticed are the presence of SCIFs around the story – Secure Compartmentalized Information Facilities. NSA director Michael Hayden has one in his house, Congress has at least one for the Select Intelligence chump committees, the FISA Court meets in one, etc.

These SCIFs seem like an array of nodes of power which structure the dichotomy between the ‘real’ or sunlight Constitutional government VS the ‘secret Constitution’ as one recent legal scholar put it – an unwritten Constitution that was accelerated since Abraham Lincoln rather interpolated such an expansive role for the federal government.

Its natural to grouse about how the Republicans (Cheney especially) have been dedicated to expanding the structure of the secret unwritten government, from the old school FEMA conspiracy now to NORTHCOM and torture, etc. However a big point of these SCIFs is that these are the locations where the Democratic individuals in high places sign off on the bullshit.

“If those walls could talk,” I believe Sibel Edmonds said in reference to how the SCIFs held the true, candid discussions about her FBI whistleblowing case that connects to Valerie Plame, 9-11, AIPAC and some byzantine Turkish/Pakistani narcotics/nuclear agent of influence scheme, which has evidently been entirely buried by Democrats who’d rather leave the sinews of the secret state in the dark. That’s why I’d conclude the secret state madness can’t really be dumped exclusively at the GOP’s door. Ask Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi what shit they’ve signed off on in the SCIFs, first!

[On a side note it would be best to encourage state legislatures to lower their barriers to major party status — if you could get some kind of Christian fundie love-thy-neighbor sort of party running, that could shake apart a chunk of the GOP base, ideally splitting the fundies from the Chamber of Commerce set. Likewise a stronger leftie Green type of effort could splinter off some wavering Dems & better pressure the rest, of which there are always many].
—Hongpong.com

Since the inception of the Republic, the elite haven’t trusted democracy to work (for them), and that’s why we don’t have one. The shadow government is the public face that you see, and the real governing happens behind the scenes. Nothing new here. That’s the way the world works.

…number of them out there – to the point that there’s a whole little industry devoted to their construction. I’ve never seen any definitive statement on how many are out there, but it’s got to be at least in the high hundreds and I would rather suspect it’s more like in the medium to high thousands (particularly given post-9/11 developments) once one starts counting them all up. Some of these are obviously a lot more important than others, but most of them are a lot more mundane than one might think – ultimately a function of the tendency towards over-classification, I think.

â€œThe absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel…may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly.” ~ Richard Haass

The Republicans are everything and more that was stated above. This is a blinding news flash? It’s been happening for eight years for Chrissakes and we haven’t done a fucking thing about it. The Republicans may have been constitutional criminals but the Democrats have been a bunch of toothless, whiney, impotent old sheep.

Until the Democrats have the courage to face down the GOP, Republicans will continue the abuse. Yes, the Republicans are awful as advertised, but the Dems’ defacto complicitness is just as bad. One could easily say “both parties must die”.

It’s no different than having a bully kick sand in your face at the beach. They’ll continue to do so until you stop them.

I’m come to the conclusion that the only trustworthy way to control the necessary (yes) secret state is that it be overseen by an NGO. As long as the budget is controlled by the Creep In Chief the whole system is compromised.